Pandora's grave

“Can you make it to OSCAR by twenty-one hundred hours?” the DCS asked. There was a pause, and for a moment he thought the line had gone dead. “Parker, do you copy? I repeat, can you rendevous at OSCAR by twenty-one hundred?”

“Negative. The Iranians are conducting an extensive land-air search, it took me all day just to get here.”

“I see. Do you foresee difficulties extracting the rest of the team?”

“Well, for goodness’ sake, director,” Thomas continued conversationally, “the whole day has been one big difficulty. Why should extraction be any better?”

“What is your status?”

“A little gouge in my thigh from a ricochet, bandaged it up with the med kit here at RUMRUNNER. It’s just a scratch, I’m still fully mobile.”

Kranemeyer turned, covering the receiver with one hand. “Anya, I need a run-down of our available assets in the area. ASAP.”

“Right on it,” the woman replied, tapping a command into her terminal.

“Hold one, Parker,” Kranemeyer ordered, returning to the phone. “We’re investigating our options.”

“Gee, thanks, boss,” Thomas replied, sarcasm in his tones. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Sending to your terminal, sir.” Kranemeyer looked down at his computer to see the list. “Listening, Parker?”

“Copy.”

“There’s a PJAK controlled camp approximately twenty-five kilometers northwest of your present position…”

3:37 P.M. Tehran Time

The camp

Northwestern Iran

It had been a dry fall, the old shepherd thought as he kicked absently at a clump of grass. Dust flew up, blowing in the wind. Very dry.

Clucking in Kurdish to his sheep, he turned away toward the camp that was, for this day, his home.

It was at that moment that a sharp buzzing stabbed at his ribs, startling him from his reverie.

Sweeping aside his robes with one hand, he reached for his belt with the other, disclosing a semiautomatic Glock and a small pouch containing a satellite phone.

The screen was bright with the caller’s number and he tapped in the encryption sequence. “Azad,” he answered briefly, his lips suddenly dry.

The voice on the other end was familiar to him, though he had only heard it once before in his life.

He listened in silence for a few moments before responding, “What you are asking is difficult. My young men encountered a Guard patrol not ten kilometers west of here within the last fortnight.”

6:39 A.M. Eastern Time

CIA Headquarters

Langley, Virginia

“I’m not asking you to shelter him, only to ensure his safe passage to the Iran-Iraq border,” Kranemeyer retorted, flipping the shepherd’s dossier open on his desk. The black-and-white photo was a few years old, but revealed the face of a man old before his time. Intelligence reports indicated that Azad Badir had only just passed his sixtieth year, but he looked far older.

“I understand your request,” the shepherd replied in perfect, educated English. No wonder, thought the DCS, scanning down the first page of the dossier. Educated at Princeton, Badir had returned to his people only months before the 1979 Revolution. He had never completed college, but it had clearly left its imprint upon him.

The shepherd was still speaking. “…young men are in short supply, and we continue to lose them, Mr. Crane. A few every month, and yet still we fight. I can hardly spare those needed to escort your man to the border.”

“Your efforts are appreciated,” Kranemeyer answered cautiously. The official stance of the US State Department and the administration was that PJAK was a terrorist organization, but the outlook of the Clandestine Service rarely matched that of Foggy Bottom. “A deal, Mr. Badir. Get my man safely to the border and we’ll see that you get the weapons you need.”

“The weapons we need? Almost everything we need, we can ‘acquire’ from the Revolutionary Guards.” There was a trace of amusement in Badir’s voice.

“Then what?”

“My words, Mr. Crane.”

“Excuse me?”

“My word was ‘almost’. We cannot get everything we need. For some things we must rely on the munificence of the outside world. Such as Stinger missiles.”

The DCS took a deep breath, massaging his forehead with his fingers. Stinger missiles. Azad Badir could scarcely have asked for something more difficult, and the old fox knew it, Kranemeyer realized with a wry smile. The US still remembered how some of the old man-portable surface-to-air missiles it had supplied to Afghanistan back in ‘89 had fallen into the wrong hands, and subsequent administrations had clamped down upon their export.

“I will do my best, Mr. Badir. In the mean time, is my man welcome in your camp?”

“Mr. Crane, strangers are always welcome in my camp,” the shepherd replied, his voice rich with irony. “Send him to these coordinates…”

7:02 P.M. Tehran Time

LZ OSCAR

The world seemed to have gone silent, Harry mused. The desolate plateau showed no signs of life.